(doing daring deeds)

Matt here. I just finished up my first organized rogaine event this afternoon, hosted by the Wisconsin Adventure Racing Society in the Southern Kettle Moraine unit.

The event itself was loads of fun – bushwacking through the forest with map and compass to track down various “controls” (little flag contraptions, where competitors punch their cards to score points) as quickly as possible. I’m hoping to convince Allison to join me at the 2014 World Rogaining Championship in South Dakota next summer, so it was great getting to put my navigational skills to the test.

As far as navigation goes, I was pretty efficient at finding the controls. Pretty happy with myself in that regard. Unfortunately, I’ve had some bizarre, nagging pain in my left quadriceps tendon the last couple weeks that basically prevented me from jogging more than a few strides at a time. (I’ll be honest…I’m pretty concerned about being able to compete in the Zumbro 50-mile ultramarathon in two weeks.)

But since most of the course was covered in ice, snow, thornbushes, and thick undergrowth, I probably wouldn’t have been able to sustain more than a fast walk even under the best conditions.

My real problem came later, as I approached the 12th control (out of 18 in Stage 1 of the event; or 23 total). When I reached down to retrieve my punch card, it just wasn’t there. Somehow the thing had slipped out of my bag. I spent 30-40 minutes retracing my steps with no luck, then decided to just head back to the shelter and call it a day. It was probably smart quitting early anyway, considering the bum knee.

The take-home lesson, then:

DON’T DROP YOUR PUNCH CARD.

So anyway, the outcome could have been better…but I had a great time regardless. I definitely plan to sign up for some future orienteering events and adventure races, once I get this knee healthy.

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For spring break this year, I’d been planning a 5-day backpacking trip along the Appalachian Trail (traversing the 72-mile section through Great Smoky Mountains National Park). I started the trip with my father-in-law and two other guys from Milwaukee, but unfortunately had to turn back after the first night thanks to a raging ear infection.

By the time I got over the ear infection, I still had a few days of spring break remaining…so I got the idea to trail run the section from Newfound Gap to Davenport Gap (approximately 31.8 miles, with 6,000 feet of elevation gain and 9,000 feet of elevation loss). I’ve covered this distance a few times before, but this would be the first time I’d be doing it completely self-supported. Since it’s a one-way run, I managed to convince my buddy Joon come along and pick me up when I finished.

Scouting trail conditions with Joon the day before the run

As you can see from the picture above, the trail conditions were less than ideal. Roughly half the total distance was covered in either snow or ice, which made for some really slow progress at times.

Gearing up at Newfound Gap

We spent Thursday evening watching basketball and enjoying some Mexican food, then I got off to an early start on Friday morning (since hitting the trail at 8:20 am is an “early start” by my standards).

View from Charlies Bunyon (4.4 miles in)

The initial section from Newfound Gap to Charlies Bunyon gets a lot of daily foot traffic, so it was especially icy. The mountains had received a lot of snowfall the previous week, and you can imagine how a week’s worth of thawing, refreezing, and constant trampling can turn a blanket of snow into a sheet of ice.

So calling this thing a “trail run” might be a bit of a stretch. The reality is that I skated ~4 miles (across ice), shuffled ~12 miles (across snow), and jogged the remaining ~16 miles (across rock & dirt).

Somewhere near Laurel Top (7.5 miles in)

When I reached the midway point at Tricorner Knob, I had to stop for 20-30 minutes to filter water from a stream. I was carrying a 3-liter hydration reservoir, and the cool temperature (mid-40’s most of the day) meant that I was able to get away with only making one such stop.

Mount Guyot, looking north (17 miles in)

Once I hit the far side of Mount Guyot, the trail began losing a lot of elevation. The downhill sections went by pretty quickly, but they really did a number on my quads. My feet were also starting to feel the mileage at this point, so I decided to make another stop at the Cosby Knob shelter to take an Ibuprofen and change into dry socks.

The aftermath

You can see from the splits just how much I was slowed down by the terrain and trail conditions. For the sake of comparison, I covered roughly the same distance in October in 6:01:17.